


Watching Him Sleep

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 10:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1344520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock watches John sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abrae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrae/gifts).



> For abrae, who loves a pining Sherlock.

He watches him sleep. 

He sits for long minutes, motionless, silent, hanging on barely audible exhalations, cataloguing sighs, counting breaths, watching fingers twitch and eyes move behind parchment-thin lids as dreams come and go.

The couch is wide enough for one man to comfortably sleep on his back, forearm thrown over cheek and forehead, legs stretched out, one bent at knee. A trusting posture, open and safe.

But John does not sleep with arms and legs akimbo.

John sleeps on his side, facing outward, back pressed against cool, worn leather. There is room enough for another to spoon against him, press into his warmth, lift his sleep-heavy arm and drape it over fine wool jacket, crisp white shirt, rumpled cotton dressing gown, cool, bare skin. In his waking dream, in this fractured reality, John’s arm tightens around his belly, draws him back, head nestled against his shoulder, hips snug against arse.

And Sherlock lies still, very still, as John’s breath warms the fine hair at the nape of his neck, lies still as John, not awake, lost in dreams, presses against him, kisses his shoulder, mumbles in his sleep.

He could be anyone, any lover, phantom or real, but he’ll not think of that, not while John sleeps and he is free to believe it is _his_ name John whispers on a sleepy sigh.

And as much as he might imagine himself sliding onto the sofa beside John, curling into his embrace, it is not his most fervent wish to do so.

No, Sherlock would rather _be_ the sofa, the surface on which John rests. Meld himself against the leather, stretch himself out, on his side, fill the space between cushion and John. It would be _his_ arm around John, his chin on John’s neck, his breath on John’s ear. 

He wants to upend the status quo, tip the scales. He wants to have John’s back.

John’s back. John, who, in waking hours, always has _his_ back.

He wants to breathe in John’s scent, taste his sweat-damp skin.

Wants it, with a hunger divorced from logic, from the crumbled wreckage of a fractured mind palace where body is transport and hearts are organs and hands are tools.

Where bodies do not yearn, and hearts do not ache, and hands do not wrap around wrists to measure the pulse of life through sleepy veins.

He watches him sleep from across the room, curled into his chair, on one side of a chasm too wide to cross.

And wishes for wings.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock has a ritual every night.

2

Mary has broken him.

Broken them.

John and Mary. Sherlock and John. Sherlock and Mary.

No ménage a trois this, no jockeying for the middle of the bed.

She is somewhere now. Nowhere now. Faded into memory, delivered unto evil, a tremble in John’s hand, a catch in his voice. 

She is the loser in this small war, but Sherlock is not the victor.

For the prize, the battleground, sleeps alone.

There are no innocents, not Mary, not Sherlock, not John. 

Realisation came too late to all but Mary. 

Too late for John, who, bereft and grieving, found a stand-in, a substitute, a lover and friend with secrets to hide and nothing – everything – to lose.

Too late for Sherlock, who stumbled out of puerile innocence on the heels of rebirth, into the arms of John, to find them already full.

Full of Mary. Of promise. Of hope.

Of betrayal.

Most nights, John sleeps in the flat he shared with Mary, on sheets still imbued with the faint scent of Clair de Lune. 

Most nights, he sleeps in the bed he’s made.

But some nights, he comes to 221B, unannounced, and lets himself in, and doesn’t wake Sherlock. The sofa is his, for Sherlock has made it a practice now to sleep in his own bed, to pretend to sleep, to cede the sofa to John. Every night, no matter that John is not here most nights, for there is still no discernible pattern to John’s appearances. 

Sherlock leaves a blanket out, folded loosely, and a pillow from his own bed. 

And in the morning, if the pillow and blanket are where he left them, untouched, folded and forlorn, he carries them back to his bedroom, only to bring them out again at nightfall. It’s his ritual, blanket and pillow, two mugs on the counter, fresh water in the kettle. Bedroom door slightly ajar, mobile at bedside, stare at the ceiling, recite the bones in the body, pi to a hundred places, Avogadro’s number, compose somber dirges for the end of time.

Sleep. Wake. Sleep and wake again.

And he is often awake when John enters, and always he rises to watch him sleep. 

And always, always, when John leaves in the morning, Sherlock reclaims the sofa, buries his face in John’s pillow, bathes in his scent.

And sleeps.


	3. Chapter 3

3

John’s visits space themselves out.

Sometimes, several soulless nights pass and still the door does not open. Sherlock has catalogued every minute sound in the tomblike silence of the flat, the key scraping, the low and mournful squeak of hinges, the exhale of air from the sofa as John sits on the middle cushion and begins to unlace his shoes.

Sherlock hears their quiet echo on the floor as John carefully lines them up, side by side, then settles in.

A week goes by, then two, and still Sherlock brings the bedding out each night, and still he replaces it each morning. 

John’s scent is growing faint on the pillow, on the blanket. It is gone from his chair, from the sand-coloured jumper on the hook beneath Sherlock’s dressing gown. 

One evening Sherlock stumbles into the flat well after midnight, lip bleeding, eye swollen and bruised. But the case is solved, the wounds will heal, and he stands and stares tiredly at the sofa, then turns to fetch the pillow, the blanket.

His violin.

Sits on the middle cushion, lifts instrument and bow, plays a lonely, melancholic waltz for one.

He does not recall falling asleep.

He wakes to the dusky grey of almost-dawn, to shoes lined up on the floor at the end of the sofa, to the scent of John on his pillow.

He can barely open his eyes as John sits on the sofa beside him, wielding a white flannel, steaming in the cool air. He’s smiling, half-amused, wistful, and he shakes his head as he presses the flannel to Sherlock’s face, holding it gently until the dried blood melts away.

“Good morning.” Sherlock’s voice is tentative, sleep-worn. 

“Not morning yet,” says John.

He wipes sleep from the corner of Sherlock’s eye, then drops the flannel and stretches, settling back against Sherlock without apology, reaching for the blanket and pulling it up over him, over them. He settles with a quiet sigh, a comfortable hum, and Sherlock’s arm hovers, unsure, disbelieving, a second, two, then softly drops.

His body surrenders.

Into sleep. Into dreams. Into John.


End file.
